Ireland sees banks' dependence on ECB growing

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The dependence of Irish banks on funding from the European Central Bank is likely to increase until late 2011 or early 2012, a Finance Ministry official said on Thursday.

The ECB and Irish central bank are currently lending Irish banks more than 150 billion euros (132.5 billion pounds) in short term liquidity assistance.

"I think at the end of this year or the start of next year they will peak," the official told reporters at a briefing in Dublin. The funding levels will then likely fall as the banks sell off non-core assets, he said.

"It will go up gradually over time if you project forward repayments of medium term funding and map that against the bank's deleveraging of non-core assets," he said.

"The ECB are well aware of this."